Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican and one of the more conservative members of Congress, explained to a journalism group a couple of years ago why he was sponsoring a federal shield act for reporters. Essentially, he said, it was because journalists help the conservative cause by fostering skepticism about government.
Skepticism is a good trait in reporters. It may go too far sometimes – negative reporting about government should be balanced occasionally with some reporting about positive developments – but as a rule it’s better to be skeptical than naive.
Yet it also would be useful to apply some of that skepticism to shield laws. A shield law gives reporters a legal basis for refusing to identify a source. Colorado is among 32 states that have shield laws; Congress finally is considering one at the federal level, and it has a great deal of support.
Yet shield laws raise several concerns. One is whether journalists should have rights ordinary citizens don’t have. Another is that concealing the source of information contradicts a reporter’s first obligation, which is to tell the truth, accurately and fully. A third problem is that granting secrecy can sometimes put a reporter in the awkward position of making news rather than reporting it.
A recent book about the most celebrated users of secret sources, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, gives some perspective.
Alicia C. Shepard’s “Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate,” published by John Wiley & Sons Inc., notes that Woodward, in particular, is ardent in his use, and defense, of the practice.
“Woodward has always felt that the government should be more open,” Shepard writes. “He also believes it is imperative for sources to know they can talk to reporters off the record, can speak the truth, and can be confident that under no circumstances will their trust ever be betrayed. This was Mark Felt’s legacy to Woodward.”
Mark Felt, as we all finally learned two years ago, is “Deep Throat” – of which revelation Shepard observes: “Woodward and Bernstein had always thought of themselves as reporters, but in this instance they were The News … .”
In the Scooter Libby trial, too, where the issue involved leaking a CIA agent’s identity to the press, the reporters who received the leaks knew who the culprit was, but they felt compelled not to divulge that information, and thus covered up an important news story.
Washington reporters couldn’t operate without promising confidentiality. In the rest of the country, confidentiality is not as necessary, nor as acceptable. Anonymity is fine for tips, but verification should be on the record. In a business devoted to transparency and disclosure, journalism loses credibility and its claim to virtue when anonymous sources are used indiscriminately.
The proposed federal shield law has bipartisan sponsorship and is widely supported in the media. It protects reporters by requiring federal prosecutors to show that the unpublished information the prosecutors are subpoenaing is relevant and critical, and that the prosecutors had exhausted other means of trying to get it.
The benefit to society of protecting sources, as many newspaper editorials have pointed out, is that it allows insiders to expose wrongdoing in government and business. That’s vital information if the public is to make informed judgments.
And yet it’s also good to give the public some inkling of why the information was leaked. To know the source, in many cases, is to know the motive. That, too, is vital information and a good reason why a promise of confidentiality should be only a last resort, not a conversation opener.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
